The selectivity of the filter means in a cellular radio telephone is typically designed as a compromise regarding divergent filtering requirements. In digital phones filtering is performed by analog intermediate frequency filters and/or by baseband filters. The latter may also be realized in an SC-technique or with digital signal processing.
The most important divergent requirements when determining the appropriate filter requirements are attenuation of the adjacent channel, the required performance of the same channel, and sensitivity or the noise bandwidth. Signals comprising each of the above types of interference signal have different frequency responses. In individual cases the optimal filter response, on certain conditions, leads to a constant signal-to-noise distance over the whole signal band. Some optimum filter responses for different interference signals are presented below.
FIG. 1 shows a situation, where a signal 1 is received at the sensitivity level. Then the interference signal is white Gaussian noise 3. In this case the optimum filter is a so called matched filter 2 having a frequency response equal to the signal response. FIG. 2 shows a situation, where the signal 6 interfering with the received signal 4 consists of co-channel interference. In the case of digital networks this test is performed at a high signal level, whereby the importance of the noise is negligible. This also better corresponds to the actual situation in a network which is operated in the capacity limited region. The optimum filter 5 in this case has a flat frequency response in the signal band. FIG. 3 shows a situation where the signal 9 interfering with the received signal 7 is interference from an adjacent channel. In this case the suitable optimum filter response 8 is asymmetric relative to the center frequency.
In prior selectivity filters it was necessary to select a compromise filter having a response of a particular type, regardless of the interference type turning out to be significant in practice. Thereby the receiver performance considerably depends on the nature of the interference. Particularly interference on the adjacent channel and a situation at the sensitivity level results to poor performance with a fixed compromise filter compared to that with an adaptive filter.
An alternative filtering method comprised carrying out a complete spectral analysis of the received signal and matching an adjustable filter to the interference signal portion of the received signal exactly, as disclosed in U.S. 4882668. However, such a method requires considerable processor capacity.